Throw Back Thursday – My attempt at freestyle embroidery

I stitched this several years ago as my first attempt at a kind of freestyle embroidery. I wanted to combine exacting stitches with some craziness. It’s hard for me to be random, so this was difficult but fun. For some people, this probably isn’t very random, but for me it is. I also wanted it to go from dark to light colors in a bit of a diagonal direction, and I think I came close to achieving that. I put the M in the lower left corner, but if I do something like this again that will change, as I had to keep it light and I think it’s a bit too light, too subtle. However, I was pretty happy with my first attempt, though I haven’t really done anything like it since. I also learned that bullion knots are not good for me. I think it was how I was angling my wrist, but those things gave me tendonitis that didn’t go away for months. I remember seeing an alternative for bullion knots and will have to find it again, as I do like the look – but I’m not going through THAT again.

Thanks, Dani! I see some crazy quilting in my future. I have some books about it and have bough a bunch of pretty fat quarters, just need to get the nerve up to try something — a small object, like a pillow.